I was going to add this to temperature compensating of o/p stage thread, but there temp is the means of altering the bias. This has nothing directly to do with temp except that hopefully it negates it's effects.

The circuit here has not been built, and it is only a concept diagram really. When the input voltage swings upward the rhs opamp senses the difference between input and output voltage because the upper fet needs several volts on it's gate before it starts conducting. The rhs opamp via the upper diode applies an offset voltage to the upper cap sufficient to make up for the dc offset between signal voltage and output voltage. Same for the lower half cycle.

Probably the caps should have high value bleed resistors so they will discharge over 10-20 seconds. Zero standby dissipation! One problem I can forsee is that if the output stage clips then the fets will both be driven fully on together

Circlotron, I think you are in the wrong track here. The basic idea is the create some sort of control loop for the minimum current (gate voltage). The gate voltage must increase with higher output current. Your idea works only for a class A stage. If you check the idea behind LT1166, you see the control loop around current shunts.

The voltage at gate-source is the audio signal plus a DC-level added (if you want the transistor to conduct all the time).

Much can be done here, but you must have crazy ideas in order to filter out the good ones. You're not alone here, I have had the same ideas myself.

When I think about it, I have papers somewhere about auto-biasing amps. Check International Rectifier (Harris?) for application notes in the subject. I remember though the distortion figures wasn't very extreme, rather low actually.

Peranders, the way the cct is supposed to work is the input goes for example a little positive but the output does not yet follow because of the gate threshold voltage, so the opamp sees the difference between input voltage and output (source) voltage and starts putting a charge on the cap more and more and because the cap is in series with the gate signal it gets a dc offset added until the gate voltage is high enough that the source voltage finally begins to follow the gate. Almost, because of the resistive voltage divider on the opamp. When the source voltage catches up to the gate (almost) the opamp output drops away until the cap may need an additional charge. I think too that the caps should have a bleeder resistor of say 1M and the caps about ~47uF.

Righteo then. This is the latest incarnation of me thinking out aloud. Here is the same principle applied to a circlotron topology, with a few of the time constants stated. The operating principle, putting it a different way, is a peak detector for how much the source voltage is below the signal voltage, and it adds this difference voltage to the 10uF cap, so now the gate voltage is higher than the signal voltage (dc offset) by the amount that the source voltage lags behind the signal voltage.

10M bleed resistors across 10uF caps allow caps to slowly discharge unless bumped up from time to time by opamp. When the music stops the caps slowly discharge down to zero and the mosfets gradually turn off completely, making the power drain *very* low. This part was unintended so it is pure serendipity.

The last part of your previous post raised my suspicion! I'm afraid you have introduced level dependent bias. As you say, without (music) signal there is no bias. But the bias should be there with or without music. You don't want to have strong xover distortion at low level, right.

So, the idea is OK, but you should look at the DC current in the o/p stage for the information to drive your opamp loops.

The opamp only works as a comparator. It charges the cap until the gate threshold voltage is reached and then stops. It is not level sensitive except for when the drive signal is below several millivolts or whatever the offset voltage of the opamp is. Seeing that would be the same level fed to the loudspeaker, that's not very loud!

Regardless of the signal level, the circuit always adds the same amount of dc offset to make the fet source voltage equal the instantaneous signal voltage. The dc offset will reduce as the fet heats up of course because the threshold voltage reduces. Actually it also means you could use unmatched fets because it would bias each one to whatever it needed.

Anyway, I am building it up tonight (Friday) out in the shed, so provided I don't set myself on fire or something, I will let you know how it goes. Good or bad, it doesn't matter. If it doesn't work then I'll learn something.

Actually I'm quite willing to concede that this setup, and hexfets too for that matter, may not be the ultimate solution for hifi. I think though that it / they could be a good thing for high power public address systems, able to drive a 70v or even 100v line directly. Given the size of mosfet modules you can buy nowadays, it may not make the best racecar or limousine, but a mighty fine truck. Anyway, enough yackety-yak. Out to the shed and see if my circuit is good or nonsense.